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Transuniversal Communications

One Person’s Unfinished Journey

I wanted to write this because I’ve been inspired by the blogs I’ve read on here and as importantly because I want people to know that the realisation of being trans – and the reality of what it means – can occur whatever your stage of life.

A bit about me if you’ll allow. I’m 40, I have a brilliant beautiful loving wife, a fantastic spirited son and a stimulating, exciting if stressful job – which means we are lucky to be together and materially well off.

So what (apart from Brexit!) have I got to worry about?

Well last year I was diagnosed trans, male to female, after a brief period of crisis. And although it’s a cliche, it does change everything. Like some others who have posted, I wasn’t someone who was consciously aware of wanting to be a different gender as a child. I didn’t crave being a girl. It’s only looking back do I realise that I didn’t understand until late primary school age there was a growing difference between being a girl and a boy – and that I’d somehow been put in the wrong group.

And that’s a thing that continues to hurt to this day.

I’m writing this blog from a holiday hotel, having come back from a children’s disco with my son, where the loudest thing in my head was: I always wanted to be one of those girls – happily dancing and laughing.

It’s the childhood feel I should have had.

And yet sitting where I am now, acknowledging my trans nature in mid life, there is a still long road ahead.

Little did I think it then, but ticking the ‘I am female’ box on a gires approved form, that was the easy bit.

Unlearning the many years of socialisation that make you a ‘man’ and trying to make up for the many missed years of socialisation that make you a ‘woman’ – that’s much much harder. I look online and see people who have successfully transitioned younger in life and have mixed feelings: thrilled for them, yet angry and sad in myself for time I can never have back again. I envy the support some have from their families and wish it was me.

Who knows where I will end up. We each have our own road and many different destinations. Mine is by no means certain. But wherever you are on that path, I wish you love and luck along the way.